Cold hands and(not so) cold hearts
by Falazure
Summary: A look at Fury and Natasha over the years.


Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.

The Fury and Natasha relationship is one of my favourite dynamics in the MCU so I wanted to try writing something exploring that.

Un-betad so any mistakes are my own.

* * *

When he fist meets Natalia(not Natasha, not yet) she's standing behind Barton. She's not cowering or frightened, but he can't get a good read on her either. Her body is calm, controlled and seemingly at ease, but her eyes are feral in a way that makes him pause. He's never seen anything like it.

" I think she could be a real asset." Barton explains to him, expression earnest and hope lacing his words. He thinks he's found something good.

Nick considers him, knows that for all of Barton's fool-hardiness the man has a good head on his shoulders, has good judgement and has brought in some of their best agents. But this might just be a step too far, this girl from a program many thought abandoned years ago. If the accounts on her prowess in Barton's reports are anything to go by however... She could be the best agent they ever bring in.

He sits up straighter, gives them both a once over before locking eyes with Barton, making sure the man knows he means business.

" If anything goes wrong it's on your head Agent." Barton grins at him and the fire in Natalia's eyes lessens a little bit. Nick smiles to himself as they both walk out.

This just might work.

* * *

Natalia is only in her second week of training and she's already blowing every other Agent out of the water. Her agility, speed and combat skills are extraordinary and almost unrivalled(Barton is the only Agent that beats her at marksmanship).

To say that Nick is impressed is an understatement.

She moves through the practice room like she was born to it, picking off enemies in record time, all the while her face is blank and unmoving. Like she only ever sees targets rather than people.

She scares him, just a little.

* * *

At first Nick thought that Natalia might have trouble fitting in with the other Agents, she's never known anything but death and pain, but she doesn't. She fits in well, almost too well really.

She gets along with pretty much everyone she meets, makes instant friends and Nick doesn't spot it until one day when he catches her in the middle of talking to two different groups that she's mimicking them. She observes how each group of people talks, walks, even their facial movements and assimilates them into her own actions.

It's both fascinating and terrifying, and not for the first time Nick finds himself never wanting to meet the people that did this to her.

She catches his eye and the facade drops, a small smile that could be the real Natalia shining-through before she goes back to pretending.

Nick swallows down his discomfort and walks away, he's got a desk full of bureaucratic bullshit to work through.

* * *

He's getting a late dinner one evening and walks in the cafeteria to find it empty, save for Natalia at one of the tables in the middle of the room. She seems to be eating a pudding cup of some kind as he walks past, grabbing one of the microwavable meals and heating it up.

The food at Shield is hardly five-star but it will do.

He grabs his food out once it's done, sets it on a tray and walks over to her table.

" Mind if I sit?" She shrugs at him with a spoon in her mouth and he pulls out a chair to sit down, he picks his fork up and starts eating.

" How'd you loose the eye?" He's used to the question, gets it all the time but this is the first she's ever asked about it. He supposes she hadn't deemed it necessary before now.

" Laser-sight from an enemies sniper-rifle, burned the retina clean off." It's bullshit of course, he never gives anyone the real story and personally he finds it amusing that there's about ten different stories that circulate around Shield about 'Fury's missing eye'. She squints at him as she sucks at her spoon, he doesn't think she buys it but she doesn't say anything either.

" There's not much to do around here at night." It's not a question, more of an observation and he nods at her, watching as she scrapes the spoon in her pudding cup to try and get the dregs of it.

" Most people don't have to stay here Natalia." He doesn't realise his slip until she flinches, looking down and away from him.

" I don't..." She swallows as she looks back up. " I don't like that name." Her voice is hard, expression stern as if she's expecting retaliation for speaking her mind.

" Do you want to be called something else?" He's matter of fact about it, there's no room for babying in his book. She's been through worse than hell certainly, but she doesn't need pity from him, she needs an anchor, someone she can rely on to just be there. Barton can fill the role of sappy emotional support.

She looks lost for a moment, her stony expression from before slipping away and for the first time she looks like the frightened child she must be deep inside. She opens her mouth a few times but ends up simply shrugging, like she doesn't even know how to answer.

Nick nods at her, thinks for a moment as he takes a few more bites of his food. " You know." Her eyes snap up to look at him. " I think Natasha is a derivative of Natalia." She stares at him for a moment.

" Natasha..." She murmurs the name a few times under her breath, a small smile growing on her face every time she says it. " I like that."

" I can change your records, make that you official name. If you want." She looks almost surprised.

" Wont that take a long time?" He shakes his head as he cuts up the meat on his plate.

" It's easy enough to do." She studies him for a moment before nodding at him with a smile on her face and Nick finishes his food in companionable silence while she tries out different surnames on him.

It does in fact take him nearly a full day to get every record in Shield changed to Natasha Romanoff(the surname wholly her idea), but when he sees the small-happy expression on her face when she reads the top of her briefing sheet his heart swells a little with something like fondness.

* * *

Natasha's first official mission is perhaps more high-profile than he should be giving to someone who is essentially a newbie, but he has more than enough confidence in her ability to succeed.

And she does.

Two hostile targets taken out and all hostages safe and accounted for, no missteps, no unnecessary casualties. Everything is tied up in a neat little bow and delivered to him right on his metaphorical doorstep.

He tries to ignore Barton's increasingly smug smile at her return to the base but he can't help the almost proud smile that slips onto his face.

She did good.

* * *

He doesn't get down to the shooting range as often as he would like these days, Hill assures him that his aim is good as ever but he doesn't quite buy it. He knows he missed a shot the last mission he went on and he wont tolerate mistakes like that from himself.

The range is quiet save for a few other shooters and he finds a relatively secluded booth to occupy. He pulls out his gun, fixes the earmuffs to his head and fires.

Hours pass and he brings his sixth sheet down to him, the shots are a little closer together but he's still not entirely happy with it. He's so preoccupied with looking at how he can improve that he doesn't notice that anyone is near him until knuckles rap against the wall.

He jumps slightly and spins, only to see Natasha standing there, on hand against the wall as her eyes twinkle in amusement.

" Rough night up in the office?" She saunters in and peeks over his shoulder.

" More like making sure I don't get too rusty ." She nods at him as she steps away.

" I can't really get rusty, can't let it go to waste, even if I want it to." The anger that used to coat those words isn't there so much anymore, but it still hurts, he can see that much. Can see how much she wishes she had been normal instead of what she was.

" We should trade places then." She smiles at that and he speaks before he thinks better of it. " Want a little friendly competition? Best shot buys dinner?" He wiggles his sheet in front of him as she nods.

" You're on." She walks away and Nick puts the earmuffs back on and picks up his gun again.

* * *

Natasha fails her first mission in '09.

She's sent to extract an engineer with valuable information from a remote base in Iran, the whole thing is fairly routine, a simple extraction job that should have had her back within a few hours.

She wasn't supposed to come back bleeding out on a gurney, the engineer wasn't supposed to get shot and die on the road side.

But the call comes in during the afternoon of the same day, that she's missed her pick-up window and within an hour they have her at Shield headquarters being rolled to an operation room.

Nick arrives at the medical wing in time to see her taken through the doors, still awake and rambling about a metal arm.

She recovers in a few days, is field-ready in a week but she is inconsolable. She blames herself completely for the engineer's death, wont take any missions because of it. Nick knows it's bullshit, he read the report, the person who killed the scientist shot through her, no one in Shield is trained to counter that.

But she doesn't listen, he doesn't think she's sleeping either and he knows that the Shield psychiatrists are worried because she wont stop saying that a man with a metal arm shot her, they think she created a delusion as the blood-loss hit her.

She doesn't let go of that though, she digs through every file she can, he thinks she goes through ones even he doesn't know about. But ultimately she winds up at a dead end.

She turns up at his door after three weeks, looking tired and defeated.

" I can only find a name, The Winter Soldier." She looks at him like she's hoping he'll tell her she's right, that she's found who was responsible for her charge's death. He doesn't' give her that.

" It's not real, it's just a legend someone made up years ago to scare operatives working inside Russia." She frowns at him, not looking entirely convinced.

" I guess..." Nick sighs and leans forwards in his seat, hands folded in front of him. He's heard the stories too, of course he has, but chasing a story wont do her any good.

" Look you're tired, and stressed. Go home, rest for a couple of days, hell a week, and come back when you're ready to get out there again." She opens her mouth then promptly shuts it and nods at him, she waves him goodbye as she leaves and Nick rubs at his forehead hoping that she'll leave it alone.

She does, and years later he'll regret not encouraging her to chase down that particular ghost.

* * *

This week has probably been the worst in Nick's life, and that's saying something.

But between sending Natasha to baby-sit Stark, finding that a Norse god(alien, whatever) has crash landed in New Mexico and re-discovering a long-lost Super Soldier in the Arctic Nick thinks that he would have pulled his hair out, if he had any left.

Each incident gets dealt with, Stark stops his self-destructive bender, the Norse god, called Thor, offers them his aid, and the presumed dead Super Soldier turns out to not be quiet as dead as they thought. It's hectic but manageable.

Then it all goes to shit.

Turns out their friendly Norse deity has a not so friendly brother and within days the asshole has caused more mayhem than even his best Agents can manage in a week. Nick is suitably pissed, but he's also not stupid. He knows that Shield can't handle this mess, none of his Agents put a dent in the God when he turned up so he turns to the people he hopes can sort this all out.

Provided they actually get their collective heads out of their asses long enough to work together.

It's touch and go to say the least but after he loses a good Agent they seem to realise that sticking together is their best bet. They head out and while Nick knows the fight isn't easy they win, they drag an angry God behind them and then head off their separate ways.

Nick doesn't hope he'll see them again, he knows he will.

* * *

He makes sure Natasha is with Rogers whenever he heads out on missions.

Not just because she is his best Agent and one of the few people who can keep up with him, but because she'll keep an eye on him. Nick isn't sure where the guy stands yet and if his recent misgivings about Shield actually come to something he wants as many of the right people in his corner as he can get.

His fears turn out to be unfounded, the guy has somewhat of a smart-mouth on him but otherwise is genuine in his want to help people, even if Rogers acts like he isn't happy being here half the time. But Nick doesn't care so much about his Agents feelings.

Rogers is a good solider and a force to be reckoned with, that's what matters.

* * *

He knows he's fucked the moment he sent Rogers and Natasha on that mission, by that point it was too late to do anything more than damage control.

Faking his own death might seem like a bit much to normal people but if he wants to actually fix this whole mess he needs to be out of the picture.

Hill and his hand-picked doctors are the only ones that know he's okay, and hell for all that this had been planned his injuries are mostly certainly not faked. He hadn't considered that a ghost story would appear and turn his plans to shit.

But he's a good Agent, he can adapt.

He's substantially more banged up then he wanted to be, but he's alive, and so is Rogers, Natasha and a new friend they seem to have picked up along the way.

Rogers is burning with rage in a way that Nick has never seen before, he wants to think that it's about how deep the rot in Shield goes but he knows better. He did his research on Rogers when he first joined and one of the things he learned was that you didn't touch Barnes, not unless you wanted the full fury of a pissed off Super-Solider on your head.

Hydra was going to learn that lesson first hand.

* * *

He finds Natasha after their briefing, he's not much better but he can walk now and part of their plan relied on that.

She'd been quiet through most of the planning, he knows that part of it was her taking in and processing all the information but another part of him also knows that she's hurt.

He didn't trust her with his secret and that is upsetting her more than either of them probably thought possible.

He takes the seat beside her and lets out a long breath, he's still in pain but it's a little more bearable now he's not standing.

" I didn't keep it from you because I didn't trust you." He gets straight to the point, they both know why she's been hiding down here and he wont pretend otherwise. " I didn't tell you because out of everyone I only trusted you with Rogers." She looks up at him confused.

" I don't.." He shakes his head at her, cutting her off before she can finish.

" I'm an important piece in this game certainly, but Rogers is the linchpin, he can do more damage than I can and we need him more." Natasha frowns at that.

" No we don't." He smiles a little at her, touched in some way that she considers him just as important.

" Well I needed to make sure he'd be alive, and you're the person I knew would guarantee that." She looks almost surprised and sits up a little straighter in her chair, she works her jaw a few times like she wants to say something but in the end she simply nods at him.

They sit in silence as they wait to begin their final assault on Hydra.

* * *

His heart stops for a moment when he sees her unmoving on the floor.

He knows that she only stunned herself but he can't help the worry that rises up inside him, she is more than able to handle risks like she just did but he can admit to himself that loosing her is not something he wants to consider.

He rushes to her all the same, shakes her gently and says her name in the hope that she'll wake up.

She does and Nick can feel the relief wash over him.

" Come on, we've got two idiots to go rescue." She take his offered hand and pulls herself up, glancing back at Piece dead on the ground with a nasty look before she follows him to the helipad doors.

They've got work to do.

* * *

He's standing hidden off to one side as he watches Rogers and Wilson talk with Natasha, she hands them a file and disappears much like he did not moments ago.

He watches the two presumably talk about hunting down a ghost-story and almost doesn't hear Natasha move up next to him but he turns to see her settle beside him, her gaze fixed on the two men several yards away from them.

" Do you think Rogers will find him?" She purses her lips a moment before nodding, her eyes still locked on the other men.

" He has more of a vested interest than I did." Nick raises an eyebrow at that because he knows first hand how personally she took the Winter Soldier's interference in her mission, but he also knows that the circumstances are different.

She'd wanted revenge, Rogers wants to bring someone he cares about back.

" And what are you going to do now?" While she had never been held captive at Shield this was probably the first time in her life she had true freedom. She could go anywhere, do anything.

" Figure out who I want to be I think." Her tone is light and she smiles at him, he smiles back as they turn to watch Rogers and Wilson walk away.

They stand together for a few moments more, both knowing that eventually they'll go their separate ways. But they know that in the end they'll find their way back to each other.

They always do.


End file.
